If there’s one thing that helps teams (and people) thrive, it’s learning how to prioritize. It’s not just about crossing things off a to-do list; it’s about focusing on what truly matters and getting it done. Prioritization is key in Agile, but it applies to life too. Prioritization isn’t just a tactical decision—it’s a reflection of your values, goals, and purpose. And honestly, it’s hard—but so worth it.

Why Prioritization Matters in Agile

In Agile, the goal is to build an MVP (minimum viable product) quickly and test it out. To do that, you need to know what matters most and where to spend your time. The thing is, you can’t do it all—so ruthless prioritization is crucial. It’s about saying yes to the right things and no to the things that add less value. Eric Ries nails this idea in The Lean Startup, where he shows how to validate ideas fast without wasting resources.

How Prioritization Changed My Team

I’ve seen firsthand how prioritization can transform a team. Once my team learned to prioritize, they started delivering more consistently. They planned better, caught bugs earlier, and cut down on unnecessary dependencies. At first, they needed me to guide those trade-off conversations. But over time, they started doing it on their own. It was amazing to watch them grow, take ownership, and build better products.

Empowering your team to prioritize doesn’t just help them deliver—it builds accountability. And let’s be honest, it’s way more rewarding when they figure things out for themselves. It sticks better.

Measuring Success

Success for Scrum Masters is simple: working, bug-free software. That’s Agile Principle 7, right? It’s not about how fast you go; it’s about the quality you deliver. I also track the team’s pace. If it drops suddenly, I look at our refinement process to see if we need clearer definitions of done. Focusing on quality and consistency helps the team avoid reactivity and crisis mode. This, in turn, gives us space to deliver better work, faster.

In addition to tracking software delivery, I believe in measuring success in a broader context, especially when it comes to personal development. Here are a few specific ways to assess personal success:

1. Goal Setting and Achievement: Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. Regularly evaluate your progress towards these goals and celebrate milestones, no matter how small.
2. Skill Development: Track the skills you’re acquiring over time, whether technical or soft skills. Consider maintaining a personal development plan that outlines areas for growth, the resources you’ll use, and the timelines for achieving these goals.
3. Feedback and Reflection: Seek feedback from peers, mentors, and supervisors. Conduct regular self-reflections to assess what you’ve learned, where you’ve excelled, and where you can improve. Journaling can be a helpful tool for this process.
4. Work-Life Balance: Measure your personal success by evaluating your work-life balance. Are you making time for hobbies, family, and self-care? A healthy balance is often a key indicator of overall satisfaction and well-being.
5. Contributions to Team and Community: Reflect on how your contributions impact your team and community. Success can also be measured by the positive relationships you build, the mentorship you provide, and the collaborative spirit you foster.

By prioritizing the delivery of working software and fostering personal and team development, we ensure that our progress is both tangible and meaningful. This dual focus allows us to validate our hypotheses, gather valuable feedback, and continuously improve our products and processes while also enriching our lives and the lives of those around us.

Steps to Ruthlessly Prioritize

So, how do you actually prioritize? Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Know Your Values and Goals: Before you can prioritize, you have to get clear on what really matters. Take a step back and figure out what’s important to you or your team.
• Define Success: Set clear goals using SMART or Objective and Key Results (OKRs). If you’re not sure how, John Doerr’s Measure What Matters is a great guide. Knowing what success looks like keeps you on track.
• Explore All Possible Paths: Don’t just dive in—think through all the steps. Mike Cohn, in Agile Estimating and Planning, explains why it’s important to see the bigger picture before you narrow your focus.
• Slice Out an MVP: Pick the smallest, most valuable piece you can deliver. In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, Jeff Sutherland talks about how MVPs help teams deliver fast and focus on learning.
• Focus and Make Trade-offs: Stick to your goal and be ready to make tough choices. In Essentialism, Greg McKeown reminds us that saying no to one thing means saying yes to what truly matters. Donald G. Reinertsen’s The Principles of Product Development Flow offers insights into making effective trade-offs in product development.
• Limit Distractions: You need a plan to deal with interruptions. David Allen’s Getting Things Done is perfect for this, offering tips to handle chaos without losing focus.
• Celebrate Wins: Don’t forget to celebrate! Big or small, wins fuel your momentum. Celebrating wins, whether they’re milestones or small victories, helps reinforce the benefits of staying focused.

Final Thoughts

Prioritization is both an art and a science. There’s art in aligning your unique values with your goals, and science in using past data to make smarter decisions. Daniel Pink’s Drive explains how motivation plays a huge role in prioritization. It’s not easy, and you’ll have to say no a lot—but that’s how you say yes to the right things.

By learning to prioritize, you’ll find more focus, more wins, and more satisfaction. And that’s what it’s all about—delivering what matters most.